


I'm the new blue-blood

by atheilen



Category: Only Ever Yours - Louise O'Neill
Genre: Abuse, Arranged Marriage, F/M, Hate Sex, Loss of Virginity, Not quite a fix-it, Queer Themes, Unrequited Love, Yuletide Treat, though if anyone could get there it's probably them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-17 19:04:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13083381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atheilen/pseuds/atheilen
Summary: megan's marriage is not what she had imagined. But there are compensations, and lessons to learn. She knows how to be top of the class.





	I'm the new blue-blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scioscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, scioscribe!

She didn’t expect it to hurt so much.

She’d watched the same vids as the other eves, of course. _There could be some pain the first time,_ chastity-ruth had said. She was prepared for that. But she hadn’t expected it to feel so _wrong,_ like he didn’t _fit_ inside her, like she couldn’t _open_ for him. She had access to the rest of the net, now, she could listen to other companions talking about their husbands, about the pleasures of the marriage bed, and she didn’t think Darwin was _that_ big. No, it must be her fault. Some flaw in her design, too hidden for the chastities to catch.

It hurt again the second time. And the third. He closed his eyes when coming to her, never looked at her. She knew who he was thinking about as he spent himself inside her, and somehow it was that rather than the pain which made her cry.

No. Not cry. Good eves never cried, good eves were always willing.

Darwin noticed. He reminded megan, sometimes, of an eve, in that he watched constantly for signs that he was displeasing other people, always tried to be what they wanted. It repulsed her. It was unseemly for a Boy, and even worse for the Man he was going to be, as Judge Goldsmith often reminded him. But it wasn't megan's place to suggest the same Improvements, and she hated that most of all.

“Oh, megan,” he said, “I’m so sorry, am I--am I hurting you? I don’t want to hurt you, here.” He stroked her cheek. It took all megan's control not to go feral and bite the finger off.

Liar. Pathetic, slavering, weak-willed. Like...well. She wasn’t going to think about who he was like. That girl didn’t exist anymore, hidden as she would ever be behind a chastity’s black robe, her beautiful hair all gone. megan was not going to make a similiar mistake. megan was not going to go to the pyre one minute before her scheduled Termination Date.

Luckily megan’s training had prepared her for just this thing. She smiled. “Oh, no, darling,” she said. “I’m just--overwhelmed with joy, is all. This is all new for me. Please, continue.”

 _Please, continue._ What was she, a chastity getting ready for a lesson? She knew better than that. She turned her growl of frustration into a sexy purr. "I want you, baby," she said. "Please, Darwin, please fuck me."

But it didn’t work the way the vids said it was supposed to. He made a humorless sound and rolled off her, turned his back to her. megan knew she was supposed to coax more, knew she could make him respond, but she couldn’t find the will to do it. She sighed, closed her eyes, regulated her breathing so hopefully he thought she was asleep. She'd fix this tomorrow.

Darwin had told her about the Great Man he was named for, in one of their Interactions. A scientist, he’d said, a visionary who had seen the principles behind all life. The first Darwin had learned that only the strong survive, that the weak were culled. That there was always room for Improvement. He’d looked sad, when he’d said that, but it had made sense to megan. A fitting legacy for Judge Goldsmith's Son.

She wondered if this was what it was like to be weak. To not want to fight. If those who were culled just rolled over and died. She wondered if she cared. Perhaps it would be a mercy if she didn't.

*

The other wives didn’t like her.

No--that was too generous. The one thing megan had always been best at, better than any of the other eves, is seeing exactly where she stood. They didn’t even notice her. They treated megan like megan had treated 14th-years, as nothings to be patiently tolerated at best and mocked at worst.

She tried, with them, in a way she hadn't yet managed with Darwin, because she missed the School and her daily time with the eves was the nearest reminder she had of--not home, the Goldsmith house was her home, she had to remember that--but of the familiar. But unlike at the School, none of her efforts seemed to pay off. She would ask them about themselves, about their husbands and their Sons, and would receive the barest politeness in response. She would offer a reminiscence of her time at School, and they would titter and move on.

 _It’s because they have Sons and I don’t,_ she told herself. Everything would be different once she bore a Son. They would have to listen to her then.

She had to have patience. It had taken her time, but she had ended 16th-year #1, even though it turned out isabel had never been playing the same game. She had won the top-ranked Inheritant in their year all the same. She could win here too.

But in the meantime, she was lonely. She'd always known her life wasn't for the other eves, it was to be lived for the men, but she hadn't realized that meant she would have absolutely no one to talk to. Her whole life had been talking, before.

The other wives were the ones who told her about isabel, after a while. She sensed cecily’s hand in the secret, it was the sort of misguided mercy cecily would think was appropriate. But they didn’t mean to tell her about frieda. frieda was an afterthought, even now. frieda was nothing. frieda was underground, after isabel had stuck her neck out for her again. She knew what the other eves were doing, she had done it a thousand times herself.

megan didn’t care about isabel. She never had. isabel had gotten what she deserved, even if she finally had to engineer it for herself. It was the first smart thing isabel had ever done.

But frieda….

megan didn’t regret what she had done to frieda. She couldn’t. She had done what she had to do to survive. And frieda would have been a terrible companion, anyone could see that.

But--she had always been jealous of isabel, but not for the reasons everyone thought. She was jealous of their friendship, the way they twined around each other at night, the way nobody else could touch them. The way isabel could summon frieda’s stupid vacuous cow-smile as if at will, the way frieda talked and laughed with her unguardedly. And now isabel was gone, and frieda was worse, and the thought of frieda _there_ was enough to make megan scream.

Darwin, of course, chose that exact moment to come in and ask her how she was doing.

And megan, in a move just as stupid as the indiscretion that had ended frieda’s life, told him. She knew in the moment she did it that she had ruined her life, that there could be no going back. Darwin was furious, and for a few terrifying moments megan wondered if she would even make it to the pyre. She might die right here, he might ruin her face, her body as he killed her with his bare hands.

He said, _you bitch._

He said, _it should be you on the pyre, you Underground, not…_

He said, _this is your fault, she said she wanted you to be her friend, that was why she…_

He said, _I hate you, she hated you too, everyone hates you, you vile...._

And then he said nothing at all, because megan’s mouth was on his, and she plundered it like a man did with a concubine, and he took her roughly, or maybe she took him, and it was quick and brutal, everything the Heavenly Seventy girls whispered about in fear when they talked about what concubines’ training would be like, only here megan was giving as good as she got, here megan was at last winning, she had won this before she died, she had won her freedom, and with that knowledge something shattered inside her, white light exploded behind her eyes as her entire body shuddered with a force she couldn't name.

When they broke apart they were both crying, both saying the same name over and over, _freida frieda frieda._

Aberrant, frieda had said, and megan felt her stomach turn with revulsion. She knew neither frieda nor Darwin would ever believe her if she told them, but she really had meant to keep the secret. Only the thoughts wouldn’t leave her mind, and she had to say, she had to say something if only to banish them from her head. It hadn’t worked.

Aberrant. Aberrant. Aberrant.

It hurt, after, but in a good way, like PE, like chastisement, like the emptiness in her belly when she chose the 0 kcal option at meals. megan thought, _I am not afraid._ It was the first time in her life she had had that thought.

Darwin said, _I thought she was_ safe. His skin was flushed, like an eve's when she exerted herself in the gym. His eyelashes were delicate, like cecily's, like frieda's. They looked pretty with tears framing them. megan thought she might want to see that again.

megan said, _no eve is ever safe._

Darwin said, _I know that now._

Darwin said, _I’m not safe either._

megan said, _I know._ She did know. It had been one of the most frightening realizations she had ever had. Because if a Judge's Son wasn't safe, that meant no one was. Her Sons wouldn't be safe either.

Darwin said, _I'm sorry. For the things I said. It wasn't your fault. It was my fault, it always is._

megan said, _it was both of our faults. We killed her. One of the only good things in our life and we killed her._ If she had earned the pyre, she should be honest with someone before she died.

Darwin said, _things have to change. But I don’t know how. I can't even change my own father.  
_

megan knew she should hold him. megan knew she should tell him to stop this nonsense. megan knew she could make him forgive her, make things go back to the way things were before she found out, even though they had both been unhappy. megan didn’t care.

megan said, _when you are Judge, you can make the people do what you want. It will take time, but you can give him what he wants to hear, make him believe you are no threat.  
_

megan said, _you cannot let him replace you. I've seen the way your father looks at me, he wants to put a Son in me, and if he does that he won't need you anymore.  
_

megan said, _if you want to make change, you can't be at the bottom of the pile.  
_

megan said, _there are ways to make people crack._

megan said, _we owe it to her._

Darwin listened.

*

“I liked history best in school,” Darwin told her, another day. They talked now, sometimes, had conversations, not Interactions. “My father says a Judge must understand history, in order to make rulings based on precedent.”

“My favorite was comparative studies,” megan said. He didn’t ask her what that meant. Maybe he already knew.

“In history we learned about emperors and kings,” Darwin said. “Powerful men like the Father now. But they had empresses, too, and queens. Women who were selected for cunning, for strength, women who could rule beside their husbands, women who ruled for their Sons.”

“That’s crazy,” said megan.

“I think,” said Darwin, “my father was right after all, when he chose you. More right than he knew or would want.” He brought out his ePad. “I used to--I used to read to--to her.”

They never spoke her name, not even though they both knew the other’s shameful secret, or could guess. 

“I would be honored if you read to me, Darwin,” megan said.

“I’m not going to,” he said. “I’m going to teach you to read. Here are your letters, we can begin with A.”

*

megan’s first Son was born when she was nineteen. It was a good age--long enough before her Termination Date that she could raise him, not so long that she would become obsolete or a bother. Darwin wanted to name him Siddartha, a name that pleased the Judge not at all.

“It’s a good name,” he said. “A prince who was born to riches, to power, but saw all the suffering in the world and gave that up for the good of all.”

Judge Goldsmith looked annoyed. megan put a placating hand on his arm. “Like we all do,” she murmured with her good-girl smile, her sweet smile. “For the Father, and the Zones.” He smiled back.

All according to plan, hers and Darwin's. He trusted her now, in a way he’d never trusted his own Son, and now that Siddartha was born, well. He was old, and fat, and not as sharp as he once was. It was only right that he should be rendered obsolete, to make way for the new. megan and Darwin were doing the Zones a service, really.

She had borne him a Grandson. He would give her whatever she wanted. And not now, not today, but soon enough, what she wanted would be the meds that would, when slipped into his drink, render him...unsteady. His judgment, questionable. His Son, ready to take his place.

And on that day, he would sleep like he’d made frieda sleep, and there would be no waking him.

Soon, now.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from The National, "Mr. November."


End file.
